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I can't update my MacBook 2015 to MacOS Catalina

It says that "This volume is not formatted as APFS". I tried converting it to APFS, but it won't allow me... I clicked the OSX file intended to convert it, but I'm confused. Is my MacBook too out of date?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Aug 11, 2020 10:01 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 11, 2020 11:53 PM

Your 2015 is capable of running Catalina, Catalina only runs on the APFS file system.

You say you are running Mojave, Mojave should be running on APFS, but it looks like the conversion never happened.

Try this and see if you get any further.

Restart your mac while pressing and holding the Command and R keys.

This will boot your mac to the Recovery HD.

When it boots up to the Recovery HD you will see a Utilities panel

click on Disk Utility and press Continue.

Click on View in the menubar and select Show All Devices.

In the left hand panel highlight the Disk, now go to Edit and see if Convert to APFS is 'live'.

If not then highlight the indented Volume and to Edit and see if Convert to APFS is possible.


Try downloading Catalina, it downloads as Install macOS Catalina.app to your Applications folder.

Using the Install macOS Catalina.app in the Applications folder you can then make a bootable USB installer

How to create a bootable installer for macOS – Apple Support

Having created a bootable USB than you can boot to that and use Disk Utility there to see if you can

Convert to APFS.

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 11, 2020 11:53 PM in response to LoudFalls

Your 2015 is capable of running Catalina, Catalina only runs on the APFS file system.

You say you are running Mojave, Mojave should be running on APFS, but it looks like the conversion never happened.

Try this and see if you get any further.

Restart your mac while pressing and holding the Command and R keys.

This will boot your mac to the Recovery HD.

When it boots up to the Recovery HD you will see a Utilities panel

click on Disk Utility and press Continue.

Click on View in the menubar and select Show All Devices.

In the left hand panel highlight the Disk, now go to Edit and see if Convert to APFS is 'live'.

If not then highlight the indented Volume and to Edit and see if Convert to APFS is possible.


Try downloading Catalina, it downloads as Install macOS Catalina.app to your Applications folder.

Using the Install macOS Catalina.app in the Applications folder you can then make a bootable USB installer

How to create a bootable installer for macOS – Apple Support

Having created a bootable USB than you can boot to that and use Disk Utility there to see if you can

Convert to APFS.

Aug 13, 2020 11:13 PM in response to LoudFalls

macs running High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina all have View in the menubar of Disk Utility..



Also you can clearly see from your Screenshot you have a View button top left

of the Disk Utility window, you can also click on that and Select All Devices, it looks like

it has already been set to Select All Devices.


The Volume InstallESD is listed as an external device and it is on Apples Recovery Server, so there would be no point in you doing anything with that.



You want to go up to Internal, as that is your macs Disk and where your Mojave is installed,

highlight OSX, then go up to Edit and see if it gives you the opportunity to Convert To APFS.

If not highlight the Disk Apple SSD...... and see if you can convert that to APFS.

I can't update my MacBook 2015 to MacOS Catalina

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